I have a SPARCstation 20 w/ dual processors that I'm trying to install 1.4rc2 on. I've tried netbooting from a Debian image as well as booting from a SuSE Linux 7.3 CD to do the install. When I expand the stage3 tree and try to chroot this is what I get:

chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/sh
FATAL: kernel too old

From what I can tell libc6 has some backward-compatibility issues with the Linux 2.2.20 kernel, but I'm not sure.

What can I boot off of to make this initial install?_________________Eric Radman
TEI Internet Services

A 1.4 test iso is available from: http://cvs.gentoo.org/~manson/iso/gentoo-1.4-s32-s64-test.iso.
Boot using "rescue" since "ramdisk" doesn't work.
Then use "insmod" to load your hardware modules, such as "insmod sunhme" to load the ethernet for Ultra machines.
"dhcpcd eth0", verify with a ping of www.yahoo.com, and then pick up with the x86 install doc.
It's much less painful than the 1.1a iso.
Use "emerge sparc-sources".
When the x86 doc starts talking about the bootloader and grub, come back to the sparc doc.

Sorry about the workaround, but new docs will be posted soon.
Of course, you are welcome to join us on IRC in #gentoo-sparc for live assistance.

The 1.1a and 1.4_rcX boot images, as well as the debian boot iso don't work at all...its using a 2.2 kernel, and we need a 2.4 kernel.

I had success booting my sparcstation20 from the test iso listed above, using the rescue side of it. It found all of my hardware and didn't need to muck with modules (which are ultra-only), but it has had problems when doing the initial emerge world and hanging on compiling grep.

Remember that this is a test iso.... we're still working on getting all the kinks and bugs out.

If you come up with bugs, PLEASE report them to the sparc and/or sparc-dev mailing lists to help us work these out.